Dispersed Entities and Black Boxes: Towards the Ontology of Social Facts Ina Dimitrova (Sofia) 1.

The Riddle: Lacking Referent? There are various entities populating the social realm, whose coming into existence, enduring and oblivion at first sight essentially hinge on some kind of collective acceptance or collective intentionality. They seem to be objective portions of the world and in the same time we can hardly find their place among the so called natural kinds: they possess huge invisible ontology (Searle 1995). Such entities pose some subtle questions regarding their status as part of what there is. Their specific features traditionally cause the quite straddled position of such objects: they could count as necessary, but impossible (as for example in Benthams theory of fictions), as fictitious, abstract, nonexistent, etc. In some more positively (in the sense that their real presence in the world is somehow allowed) oriented accounts, they are explained through the magical abilities of the collective intentionality to impose certain status on given bearers or brute facts (Searle) or for example through their conceptual isolation in a secure realm of social kinds (Hacking), where such troubling phenomena could reside. Quite briefly formulated, my suggestion here is to tackle this specific ontological quandary in two stages: first, applying the notion of conceptual scheme or linguistic framework and second, elaborating its general idea in more empirical way through the concept black box (considered as an answer to the riddle of the huge invisible ontology of the social), introduced by actor-network theory and the sociology of translations the self-proclaimed successors of ethnomethodology. They trace empirically the outlines of these conceptual networks, namely the jointly and locally achieved, maintained and shared use.

I argue that applying such conceptual tools, it appears that in certain sense these entities are distributed, lacking solid body; they are dispersed in their many loci of use. But in order to push them into existence and grasp them theoretically we have established complex procedures and techniques through which we decontextualize, dissociate, detach and disentangle them. After this process we have black boxes: any setting that, no matter how complex it is or how contested its history has been, is now so stable and certain that it can be treated as a fact.

2. Conceptual scheme and positing objects: Treacherous Mimicry? The focus of the second part is to explore and test one hypothesis: the conceptual convergence of the notions of conceptual scheme (elaborated in the tradition of Carnap, Quine, Davidson, etc.) and of collective intentionality (respectively, wrought by authors as Searle, Tuomela, Gilbert, etc.). Undertaking this step arises from the need to find ways to explain how the objects in question could count as objective portions of the world, looking in the same time as lacking concentrated existence. The initial assumption, using Putnams terms (Putnam 1981) is that objects and reference arise out of discourse (including different classification practices, intellectual technologies, special algorithms of representation, etc.) rather than being prior to it; they do not determine it or define it in one or another way; they follow it and are put into existence by it. At first sight such a claim shares a lot with the Searles claim that in the case of social reality the (collective) intentionality precedes the ontology (Searle 1992). Such a view could probably be called linguistic idealism and could be identified with the theoretical situation after the collapse of the transcendental subject: it disappears and falls apart into communicative practices, which cannot be enclosed in the structure of individual mind. This first stage of the present analysis, relies on the shift from the idea of linguistic framework of Rudolf Carnap to its version, found in Davidson, Putnam and mainly Rorty, which is more apt to the objectives set here. But first I want to provide some grounds for the introduction of this concept otherwise its appearance could seem superfluous. I will try to solve this task with the assistance of the notion of reflexivity.

Quite schematically I intend to use the notion of reflexivity as a designation of a peculiar phenomenon, emerging clearly when we attempt considering the demarcation line between the objective and the subjective realms of the social reality. It grasps the specific unity of the so called objective social world and the cognitive or mental structures. In other words reflexivity is label for the unique fusion of the order of being and the order of knowledge. I maintain here that the radicalized version of this phenomenon could be designated as ontologized reflexivity: this amounts to the repudiation of the idea that we can differentiate successfully between what people speak about and what they say about it, to use Rortys expression. In such a sense, if we press Davidsons and Quines criticisms of the language fact and scheme content distinctions far enough, we no longer have dialectical room to state an issue concerning how language hooks onto the world between the realist and idealist (Rorty 1979, 256). The same could be stated in regard to the question about the relation between the way we speak about social entities and their objective existence out in the world. A long theoretical way had to be traveled to reach such a version of social ontology: the different perspectives in social sciences conceptualize in diverging ways the idea that the locus of the social should be connected with symbolic and cognitive structures of knowledge. The relation mind - social reality has produced numerous perspectives, which rely on the idea that mind is a substance, place, or realm that houses a particular range of activities and attributes (Schatzki 1996, 22). Such an initial assumptions are however too narrow to allow any adequate concept of social reality and social entities. In order to explain the structurality of the social world, one need not climb down into the inwardness of mental qualities, but rather must stay on the level of signs and texts in their publicness (Reckwitz 2002). I argue that precisely here we can successfully supplement our post-foundationalist perspective with the idea of conceptual or linguistic frame, or language game. With its assistance we can attempt at taking the mental out of the mind or demonstrating that meanings are not in the head and leaning upon that claim that social entities have specific kind of dispersed or distributed existence. This is way of bridging the gap between the objective social realm and the numerous ways in which we conceptualize it, describe it, provide common accounts of it, handle it

through different intellectual technologies, etc. In such a sense the existence of social artefacts or objects is considered, using the notion of conceptual scheme, that is the idea that objects do not exist independently of conceptual schemes or that objects and reference arise out of discourse rather than being prior to it. I think that such a model is quite useful when we consider the nature of social entities it is not the social objects that centre or organize the shared, meaningful uses and discoursive practices, but rather the latter posit or lay down these objects as their referent only subsequently. In order to determine these objects we must not refer to some kind of last foundation, but to the ensemble of rules, which enable or permit their constitution as objects. Lets remind the original Carnaps idea that if we want to speak in a given language about a new kind of entities, we must introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules. This procedure should be called construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question. Leaning on this, we can conclude that recognizing something as a real thing means succeeding in its incorporation into the system of things, so that it fits together with the other things as real, according to the rules of the framework. (Carnap 1956, 2). Using the notion of conceptual scheme and the repudiation of the dualisms, mentioned above, a peculiar reversal emerges: instead of taking one posited in advance layer of pregiven entities, which is expected to determine the permitted scope of the theoretical reconstruction, we can start from the idea of meaningful shared use, of rational and logical mundane theorizing. Precisely from it complex fabric arise the existent social entities. In such a sense the coordinated, shared use or the conceptual scheme is terminus a quo and the objects, arising only afterwards - terminus ad quem. Another way of formulating such a claim is Rortys version of the first dogma of empiricism, already mentioned above the repudiation of the idea that we can differentiate successfully between what people speak about and what they say about it by means of the essence of the object. The mirror metaphor rests precisely on this posited nature of knowledge as a relation to objects. The object, which the proposition refers to, imposes the truthfulness of this proposition: the grip of the object upon us is ineluctable (Rorty: 1996, 157). In such a sense objects are the compelling side of the relation. Exactly on such assumptions rests the strategy of the so called realists in social

theory they argue that the way we gain knowledge of the social world depends on the type of the existent entities they determine the way we weave our discourses. Rejecting such claims and assumptions amounts to the rejection of the belief in the existence of some stable, eternal referents, imposing the rules of the discourse about the social world. In other words I contend that there are no such stable pre-given social objects, which are the common referent of the different ways we speak about them. The social sciences embark on its search, undoubtedly with great enthusiasm, because precisely its identification would serve as justification of their problematic and questionable usefulness. Otherwise they must face the unpleasant perspective, outlined by Quine: he states that Geistswissenschaften rest on concepts, which are so unclear that we must simply erase them, when we trace out the structure of reality. Here I just want to mention the striking resemblance between this claim and the general view, expressed by Bentham in his theory of fictions social entities are unreal, they are almost impossible, but still they are necessary. In such a sense we do not have an array of fixed objects, building up the ontology of the social; we have simply the transient, contestable, vanishing or popping up objects, pushed into existence by our differing or partially coinciding language games. Putnam designates such a view as pragmatic pluralism. So, when we ask what in fact we are speaking about or what really exists out there, the answer would be: whatever our beliefs are true of. As Rorty says the model here is the familiar contextualist claim that a non-Euclidean space is whatever certain axioms are true of (Rorty 1991, 63-4). If we call such a view antiessentialism, it amounts to the conviction that no dividing line could be drawn between objects, discovered before the process of belief formation and objects, constructed during it. The only notion of object we need is that of intentional object it is what a word or description refers to. You find what it refers to by attaching a meaning to the linguistic expressions to that word or description (Rorty 1991, 76).

3. Social objects as black boxes

Against such a background my hypothesis is that we can think of social entities as a kind of dispersed objects, distributed in the fabric of the meaningful, shared use, as growing out, emerging from the different loci of microuses. The endeavours of ethnomethodology could be situated in such perspective: good example is Cicourels study of the formation of macroconcepts as summary representations: they are organized knowledge structures that can be said to be in the environment and not simply in the head of members of the culture (Cicourel 1981, 66). To some extent similar, but quite more elaborated is the concept of black box, designating well-established fact or an unproblematic object, which however has passed long and curious stage of formation or construction. Introduced quite schematically the black box in the context of ANT is any setting that, no matter how complex it is or how contested its history has been, is now so stable and certain that it can be treated as a fact. A black box contains that which no longer needs to be considered, those things whose contents have become a matter of indifference. The law, for example, is a collection of black boxes. In its formation stage a law is a contested set of competing sentences around which occasionally large alliances are built to influence their specific shape. During the legislative process they are fluid and open. Once the legislation has been passed, contested sentences turn into a black box, sealing all the elements, however arbitrary they might be, in a fixed and stable relationship that cannot be questioned easily (Callon and Latour 1981). If we use the Callons concept translation which implies the passing through different, successive states in the mentioned above warm phase of mutual constitution, the notion of black box should grasp the moment when the whole process begins to run automatically and there is no need to renegotiate the process case by case. Through this concept Callon (Callon 1991) explains the durability of given configurations of actornetworks. The successful translation process leads to agreement and coordination and as a result the network converges and becomes irreversible. In this moment it becomes stable and starts to behave and to be treated as one entity rather than as a heterogeneous network. In other words it becomes black box and wraps up all previous passage points in the process. A macro-actor (an actor-network that behaves like an actor) grows by adding or associating actors and simplifying them into one black box. In the process of becoming

black box the key moment that makes it possible is its passing through a series of transformations. One of the most important features of black boxes is that they are the objects, which we designate as referent, as the cause rather than as the outcome. In reality it is the outcome, which becomes possible and comes to existence only after a long series of transformations. In such a sense it is consequence and not a cause. (Callon 1986, 15). We furnish the world with these objective portions through this process of putting them to trials, to use Latours term. To understand what they are, we should stick more carefully to the method of following scientists practice, if we are interested in science studies: inside the laboratory the new object is a list of written answers to trials and it is defined and named after what it does. It has no other shape than this list - the proof is that when you add an item to the list you redefine the object, you give it new shape. The new object is completely defined by the list of answers in laboratory trials (Latour 1987, 878). New objects become things isolated from the laboratory conditions that shaped them, things with a name that now seems independent from the trials. Routine use transforms the naming of an actant after what it does into a common name. This process is not mysterious or special to science. It is the same with the can opener we routinely use. We consider the opener and the skill to handle it as one black box which means that it is unproblematic and does not require planning and attention. We forget the many trials we had to go through (blood, spilled beans, shouting parents) before we handed it properly The list of trials becomes a thing; it is literally reified. (Latour 1987, 92). If everything goes well it begins to look as if the black boxes were effortlessly gliding through space as a result of their own impetus, that they were becoming durable by their own inner strength. Mutatis mutandis the same scheme could be applied to the peculiar existence of social entities. As ethnomethodoloy set to demonstrate, here we should also stick to following the practices, typical for the given form of life, including social scientists practice. Exactly like the black boxes social entities moves in space and becomes durable in time only through the actions of many people; if there is no one to take it up, it stops and falls apart no matter how many people may have taken it up for no matter how long

before.There are always people moving the objects along but they are not the same people all along (Latour 1987, 137-8). I suggest considering social entities these objective portions of the real world, to quote Searle, their specific stability and ability to resist as the final product, as the outcome of such process, whose intermediate phases have converged, have become unobservable and dropped out especially for the newcomers - for newly convinced users it is always one object, conceived as initial causes and premises, as indecomposable, independent entities. In fact they are anchored in many different points of the net or, to use the vocabulary from the first part of this paper, of the language game, of the conceptual scheme. In this sense they are dispersed and precisely here we could find the reason for their stability and for the impossibility to dismantle them, for instance, merely through collective agreement. They are caught up in a network of relations, in a flow of intermediaries, which circulate, connect link and reconstitute their identities. The impression of distinctness is achieved through different procedures and techniques which could be called framing the operations used to define the objects, to dissociate, to disconnect them from the texture of the network, making them perfectly identifiable and separated. Only afterwards we have existent and distinct social entities.

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